WASHINGTON – The Trump administration could probably take it as a clear sign of success that the biggest media criticism of the federal response to the horrific damage done by Hurricane Harvey, so far, has focused on the first lady’s shoes.

That would not seem hyperbolic considering, as Stephen L. Miller wrote for Fox News Wednesday, “The New York Times, Washington Post, Vanity Fair and Vogue all ran editorials about the choice of footwear and what it all means in the context of who Melania Trump is and what it means while boarding a helicopter.”

The first lady had come under intense media criticism, facetiously dubbed “Shoegate,” for walking just 200 feet in stiletto heels while boarding and exiting Marine One.

Despite the fact she actually wore tennis shoes in the flood zone, as Miller reported, “Politico wrote 890 words about her shoe choice and demanded in a since-deleted tweet that the White House release a statement condemning her choice of footwear for the short walk. Politico’s playbook dedicated another four paragraphs Wednesday morning.”

So, given the chance Thursday to focus on real issues during the first White House press briefing since the storm swamped Houston, the media immediately began looking for bigger problems than footwear choices.

Reporters persistently probed for any sign of deficiencies, major or minor, in the Trump administration’s first response to a major natural disaster.

They looked for any clue that the response to Hurricane Harvey could be compared to what happened after 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history and one of the five deadliest.

But unlike Katrina, there were no reports of hundreds of people dying from thirst, hunger, lack of shelter or violence.

Not that there wasn’t the strong potential for Harvey to become another Katrina.

Both had record flooding and massive property damage. Additionally, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin’s decision to delay ordering an evacuation until less than a day before landfall was blamed for hundreds of deaths. Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner didn’t even order an evacuation.

Yet, the outcomes were entirely different: The horror stories from Katrina were not duplicated in Houston.

The death toll from Katrina was 1,833 lives. The death toll from Harvey had only reached 35 by Thursday.

The Trump administration’s point man for disaster response credited the coordination among federal, state and local agencies handling the emergency.

Homeland Security Adviser Tom Bossert, who was with FEMA during Katrina, kicked off the press briefing with an update on recovery operations by citing the efforts of 28 search and rescue teams and task forces from 16 different states, while cautioning, “Lifesaving and life-sustaining operations are still underway.”

Homeland Security Adviser Tom Bossert

But, while detailing the massive scope of recovery efforts and expressing empathy for the victims, Bossert had no real major problems to report.

That reduced the New York Times to virtually pleading for any news about anything that had gone wrong among the combined efforts of federal, state and local agencies.

Times White House reporter Glenn Thrush asked Bossert, “Were there any areas where coordination has been wanting – where you’ve seen a need for improvement?”

The administration spokesman replied: “I think, at this point, the message is that coordination is happening better than any storm that we’ve seen before. And so, stressing on anything that’s not working well really is, especially from this podium, going to be ill-informed.”

Bossert didn’t stop there.

“I’m seeing nothing but positive. I’m seeing nothing but appropriate coordination. If there is a problem somewhere, (FEMA chief) Brock Long is going to get his handle around it and he’s going to fix it. That’s my perspective. So not to be political on that answer, but I don’t have a negative word on coordination right now.”

That was certainly a far cry from the aftermath of Katrina, in which the administration of President George W. Bush was severely criticized for what was portrayed as the federal government’s inadequate response and poor coordination with state and local agencies.

Flooding i New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina

So, CNN tried another tack, seemingly in the quest to find some kind of negative news story.

Murray tried another angle. She noted Bossert had said the emphasis was on deporting illegal immigrants who had committed crimes, but “the acting director of ICE has made it clear that he views coming to the U.S. illegally as a crime.”

Her question, essentially, was whether illegal immigrants seeking help or shelter from the storm should worry about deportation.

After noting that her phrasing of the question contained a lot of “ifs,” Bossert’s bottom-line response was that the focus right now by Border Patrol and ICE officers was on “saving lives and providing food, water and shelter.”

Flooding in Houston from Hurricane Harvey

He then added, in effect, a warning that the reporter’s persistent skepticism could cost lives.

“I’d like to leave it at that, because that’s the clear message I want to leave behind to somebody that might otherwise, based on your questioning – no disrespect intended – be discouraged from going in and finding something that would save their life.”

Bossert was essentially warning reporters that he didn’t want desperate people to get the mistaken impression they would be deported if they sought lifesaving help.

It was perhaps a gentle reminder that the spreading of inaccurate information could have deadly consequences.

And it was the last question from a reporter that probed for some fault in the Trump administration’s response.

However, a major member of the mainstream media had already declared the Trump administration should not be praised even if it successfully handled its first test in responding to a major natural disaster.

“Disasters are a terrible time to judge a president,” Greenfield asserted, perhaps evenhandedly.

But he then characterized the president’s appearance in Texas as having “the marks of a self-obsessed, egocentric boy-king who is sufficiently distanced from the rhetorical demands of his office that he was unable to offer words of compassion instead of his usual rah-rah sales pitch.”

So, the media had been reduced to finding little to criticize but the president’s optimism and his wife’s shoes.

Perhaps that’s why the New York Times and Washington Post made a political issue out of a critique by a fashion editor for Vogue.

Vogue fashion editor Lynn Yaeger

Shoegate was sparked by what was either an op-ed or a fashion critique, perhaps both, by Vogue’s Lynn Yaeger, titled “Melania Trump’s Hurricane Stilettos, and the White House’s Continual Failure to Understand Optics.”

Despite being informed by the White House that the first lady had brought a change of shoes to wear once she reached the disaster zone, Yaeger wondered, “But what kind of message does a fly-in visit from a First Lady in sky-high stilettos send to those suffering the enormous hardship, the devastation of this natural disaster?”

And then the New York Times, the Washington Post and Politico followed suit by taking that criticism seriously.

But the last word may have come from the legions on social media who ridiculed Yaeger online for daring to criticize the first lady’s sense of style, given the fashion maven’s own extremely unorthodox look.

At least, that’s what it looks like, from the front row of the White House press briefing room.

Those shoes could pay for a year’s salary.

That’s the improbable but still inescapable thought, while staring at the line of incredibly well-heeled footwear adorning the network reporters in the front row.

It’s so clearly the shoes that separate the haves from the have-nots.

The rich and famous from the ink-stained wretches. The famous television reporters from the grubby school of small fries packed into the world’s most televised sardine tin. Those wearing makeup from those just trying to make deadlines.

But it’s not the shoes that provide the most fascinating view while standing against the wall, adjacent to the front row.

It’s the faces.

When WND began covering White House press briefings on a regular basis after the election of President Trump, the daunting logistics of the overcrowded and antiquated indoor swimming pool turned indoor press pool immediately became self-evident.

Fireworks between mainstream media reporters and the administration’s first press secretary, Sean Spicer, had made press briefings must-see TV, and the tiny space was packed on a daily basis like never before.

There were only 49 seats in the oversized doll house that is the White House press briefing room. And those were all assigned. And with dozens of additional reporters lining the walls, the only way to get an unobstructed view of the proceedings was to arrive early enough to secure a place to stand against the wall in the front row.

The folding ladder marks the perfect spot to view both the press secretary and the reporters during the briefing. In the first row are reporters from: NBC, FOX, CBS, AP, ABC, Reuters and CNN. In the second row are: Wall Street Journal, CBS Radio, Bloomberg, NPR, Washington Post, New York Times and ABC Radio. The row of chairs against the wall are for White House personnel.

The hope was that standing in such a prominent position might catch the eye of the press secretary. Getting called upon to ask a question is the Holy Grail quest of most every reporter in the room. Some reporters are genuinely curious and want insightful information. Some want face time. Some want both. Old timers just want a good story.

Newbies refer to getting called upon the first time as losing their virginity.

The reporters from the big outfits, plus a few favorites, almost always get called upon. The rest get scraps.

Although much was made of Spicer calling first upon smaller conservative outlets during his earliest briefings, there was no real change.

The gaping maw and endless appetite of the mainstream media are always well fed.

WND quickly realized, more important than being seen by the press secretary was being able to see the press corps.

Odds were slim of being called upon (although it does happen) no matter where a reporter of a relatively smaller outfit stood. But, by standing in the front row, one could see the whole show: not just the press secretary, but also the expressions on the faces of every reporter.

Every reporter who writhed in agony as the press secretary refused to apologize for what the press considered the president’s latest unpardonable sin.

Every reporter who contemptuously demanded to know when President Trump would drop the charade of pretending President Obama had spied on him.

Every reporter who furiously demanded to know how a congressional committee had dared obtain evidence that Obama’s administration had spied on Trump.

Every furrowed brow. Every eye roll. Every pursed lip.

Every evil eye.

It was a great show. Just missing the popcorn.

How to boil a press frog

Then suddenly, one day, without anyone really noticing, the show was over. Or, at least, put on hiatus.

Things just weren’t what they used to be in the press room. No more major food fights.

From the freewheeling, vein-bulging, eye-popping shouting matches of the Spicer days, an almost eerie calm had descended under his successor, Sarah Sanders.

In 1969, President Richard Nixon converted the White House indoor pool into the press briefing room, to accommodate the growing press corps and communications technology. The pool had been built by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. Before that, the space had been a laundry room.

When ABC White House reporter Jonathan Karl raised his voice on Friday and indignantly demanded an answer to a question, it suddenly seemed like old times.

“What did the president mean when he said there were very fine people on both sides?!” Karl yelled at the woman two feet in front of him. “Who were the very fine people who were protesting with the neo-Nazis at Charlottesville?!”

The answer seemed kind of self-evident: Those who were not neo-Nazis.

But, having already answered one of his questions, Sanders didn’t even bother to respond. She just said she was pressed for time and moved onto another reporter.

If it had been, the next reporter called upon would’ve extended the professional courtesy of then asking it again to Sanders.

And Karl isn’t just any reporter. He was just voted president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, last month. That’s the group that just happens to assign the seating in the briefing room. So, if there were one reporter in the room the others might defer to, it would be Karl.

But the other reporters knew the game. What Karl asked wasn’t really the “key” question. Except to him. It was the kind of gotcha question designed to provoke a sharp response and make for a fiery sound bite on the evening news. It was the journalistic equivalent of a poke with a sharp stick.

Except Sanders didn’t flinch. And that simple non-response symbolized something that was suddenly the new normal.

A reporter raising his voice was now the exception. It used to be the rule.

Spicer probably would have been more inclined to argue Karl’s point, perhaps because he was so often and so visibly irritated and exasperated with what the administration would consider grandstanding for the cameras by reporters.

But, where Spicer was more likely to engage reporters in debate, and even loud and pointed arguments, Sanders has proven more likely to shut them down, politely but firmly. And definitively.

(Raw cell phone video from a reporter’s perspective shows just how packed the press briefing room can get during the Trump era.)

Still, it’s not just the changing of the guard at the podium that has made such a drastic difference.

WND noticed a series of stealthy but significant changes in the way the administration has dealt with the White House press corps over the last few months.

Those changes were gradually but steadily installed after the White House press office came under severe criticism for not being on the same page as the president in reporting the reasons for his firing of FBI Director James Comey on May 9.

Although the changes have been small and generally subtle, added up together, they have effected a rather large and dramatic change: the virtual taming of the White House press corps.

And the restoration of civility to the daily White House press briefings.

These were the changes the White House made to the daily press briefings after the second week of May:

More Sanders, less Spicer

Fewer briefings on camera

Shorter answers, sometimes

Sometimes, no answer (but an IOU)

Shorter notice on start times

Most of those changes evoked little more than murmurs and mild complaints from the press corps, as they were eased in over a period of weeks.

With one major exception.

The increase in something called a “gaggle.”

A gaggle is just a regular press briefing. Except … there’s no cameras.

And taking a camera away from a television reporter can be like taking an oxygen tube from a space walker. It’s their lifeline.

And they didn’t take to it kindly, at all.

Network reporters complained. Vociferously. The howling could be heard loud and long.

After a few weeks, CNN White House reporter Jim Acosta was so vexed, he virtually equated his loss of face time with an attack on the freedom of the press.

“Make no mistake about what we are all witnessing. This is a WH that is stonewalling the news media. Hiding behind no camera/no audio gaggles.”

“There is a suppression of information going on at this WH that would not be tolerated at a city council mtg or press conf with a state gov.”

“Call me old fashioned but I think the White House of the United States of America should have the backbone to answer questions on camera.”

He also complained loud and long on camera about losing camera time, wondering on air, “You know, if he (Spicer) can’t come out and answer the questions and they’re just not going to do this on-camera or audio, why are we even having these briefings or these gaggles in the first place?”

Acosta was wrong about the audio. Which was significant. Audio recording of the gaggles was, in fact, allowed, to have a public record of the meetings and to confirm the accuracy of the questions and answers. The White House just wasn’t allowing the live broadcast of the audio. Afterward was fine.

To Acosta, it somehow all amounted to “stonewalling the news media,” and “a suppression of information.”

In reality, no information was suppressed. There were still press briefings. There was just less Acosta on television. And fewer televised appearances by other network reporters.

And, as time went by, fewer barbed questions. And fewer shouting matches. And more civilized give and take.

Things calmed down. As did Acosta.

Once all the changes took effect over the course of a few weeks, the difference inside the briefing room became inescapably noticeable to anyone paying attention.

WND described to a senior adviser to the president how cordial the atmosphere had become, with actual substantive discussions of the issues having eclipsed outbursts by reporters playing to the cameras.

The White House official’s jaw literally dropped upon hearing the news, and he silently mouthed “Wow,” while gently shaking his head.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders

The gaggles had perhaps the most pronounced effect in turning down the heat, but once the average temperature at the briefings had dropped, the White House resumed allowing cameras at most briefings.

Coincidentally or not, almost all briefings have been on camera since Spicer resigned on July 21, when his former deputy, Sanders, took his place.

Yet the atmosphere has remained relatively calm during briefings.

The effects of the other changes were perhaps more subtle.

Sanders had already begun to conduct more briefings after May 9, as Spicer held fewer. She has been simply less combative while just as assertive.

Whereas Spicer would fight back against reporters jibes, she has more often refused to engage them in prolonged arguments, politely but definitively blunting insulting barbs and putting an end to unpleasant topics with unambiguous declarative statements.

A prime example of that was on display Thursday when a reporter asked for a response to comments made by Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., that the president has not “been able to demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence that he needs to demonstrate in order to be successful.”

Sanders sharply replied, “I think that’s a ridiculous and outrageous claim and doesn’t dignify a response from this podium.”

Next question.

The press briefing room and offices essentially connect the main structure of the White House with the West Wing.

Sometimes Sanders has no answer at all. If she has not spoken with the president about a particular topic she will issue an “IOU” of sorts to a reporter, and promise to get back with an answer when she has one.

A common Sanders refrain has become, “I’ll find out and get back to you on that.”

That keeps her and the president on the same page, and it largely prevents the media from trying to exploit any discrepancies, real or imagined.

Similarly, if the president hasn’t spoken in depth about a particular topic, Sanders is less likely to engage in speculation. That is, she often just gives shorter answers than the press might like. She will just give the White House position and not engage in hypothetical scenarios reporters might present.

An example would be the briefing on Aug. 1, during the North Korean crisis, when reporters wanted to know how the president would respond to this or that provocation.

Sanders simply and dutifully repeated the White House mantra: “We’re weighing all options, keeping all options on the table. And, as we’ve said many times before, we’re not going to broadcast what we’re going to do until that happens.”

Another somewhat enigmatic change since Sanders took over has been the habit of giving later and later notice as to when briefings will begin.

Under Spicer, a note would be sent to White House reporters announcing the time of the next day’s briefing, typically at 1 or 1:30 p.m. And the note would usually arrive before 10 p.m. on the evening before. Under Sanders, the note usually says the briefing time will be announced in the morning.

Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes it isn’t announced until the afternoon. Sometimes there isn’t even a briefing.

Someone conspiratorially minded might suspect that gives the mainstream media less time to game plan and coordinate a line of attack du jour.

But the most pertinent bottom line of all is the press frog has been boiled.

That is, just like the frog that doesn’t realize the heat has been increasing until it’s been boiled, the White House press corps has been largely tamed, as a series of incremental changes has been steadily implemented.

And the indisputable bottom line is that civility has been restored at the daily White House press briefings.

No more must-see TV

Even a casual glance at the dramatic difference between then and now will confirm that.

As mentioned above, a reporter’s raised voice has become such an exception to the norm that Sanders would not even respond to it, ending any confrontation before it even began.

Compare that with just the titles of Spicer’s greatest hits, the most popular YouTube videos of his press briefings as compiled by WND in April:

Spicer’s press briefings had a WrestleMania appeal. There was an element of gladiatorial spectacle.

And the TV ratings went through the roof, turning White House press briefings from dry, stilted exercises in diplomatic boredom into political versions of Grand Theft Auto, Mortal Kombat, Halo and Call of Duty all rolled into one.

Briefings were not always as heavily attended by the press during the Obama administration

The briefings were even wildly popular among Spicer’s harshest critics. Bill McMurray tweeted: “Sean Spicer’s press briefings are mesmerizing. Like a piece of red meat thrown to the world’s hungriest, most talented wolves.”

Spicer’s videos were a huge hit on YouTube, commanding up to seven times the viewership of briefings by Obama’s press secretaries.

The briefings – broadcast live on TV by Fox News, CNN, MSNBC and C-SPAN to an average of 4.3 million viewers – even beat broadcast daytime favorites on CBS and ABC, such as “The Bold and the Beautiful” and “General Hospital.”

Fox News’ “Happening Now,” the show during which Spicer’s briefings were frequently broadcast, set records for the highest viewership in the network’s 20-year history.

War and Peace

So, why did the White House pull the plug on must-see TV if it was such a smash?

It may have been hugely popular with the base and cathartic for Trump supporters to see someone stand up against the elite representatives of the mainstream media and do battle with them day after day.

Former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer (Photo: Twitter)

But the constant conflict had to take some kind of toll. The daily spectacle had come to live up to the moniker of media circus, and lion tamer Spicer was looking visibly weary.

The last straw plainly appeared to be the intense scrutiny the White House press staff came under after their version of the firing of Comey differed somewhat from what the president would say two days later in an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt. And the media pounced on the bedraggled White House staff.

Trump told Holt he had already made up his mind to terminate Comey even before receiving a report from the Justice Department recommending the firing. The president also said his exasperation with the FBI’s Russia investigation may have played a role in his decision. But, Spicer and Sanders had already told the press the president hadn’t made the decision to fire Comey until seeing the report.

Reports at the time indicated Trump was furious that he and his press representatives were not on the same page.

And that’s when all the changes listed above were put into place.

The White House had seemed to decide that instead of continuing to beat up on the press, it would now bring it to heel.

And that’s how the great war between the White House press corps and the White House press staff came to an end and civility was restored.

Partisans can debate over who won the war.

But there is little doubt, it is the press secretary who is now keeping the peace.

WASHINGTON – The venerated journalistic institution the Washington Post, which recently adopted the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” published a column Wednesday by a spokesman for the “Prince of Darkness” who blamed Christianity for slavery and white supremacism.

Although slavery was historically practiced by virtually every culture in the world and only stopped by Christians, Greaves revives the argument that blames it on Christians.

In the op-ed, the self-described co-founder of the Satanic Temple:

Objects to Christians blaming Satan for the death and violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, earlier this month;

Objects to condemnations of white supremacy as satanic;

Blames Christians for slavery;

Claims Satan is pro-science and pro-humanism;

Claims modern satanism embraces Enlightenment values;

Claims satanism is more modern than “theocratic superstitions”;

Claims satanism embraces secular values;

Blames all white supremacy in the U.S. on something called the Christian Identity movement;

Blames slavery on “Protestant radicalization”;

Claims Satan is a victim;

Claims there is a witch hunt against satanists;

Claims satanism is diverse and not racist;

Claims satanism is a victim of superstition;

Greaves begins his piece by taking exception to what he terms a “consensus among Christian leaders was that Satan was at fault” for the violence and death in the melee between far-right protesters and far-left counter protesters earlier this month in Charlottesville.

Evangelist Franklin Graham had shamed politicians “trying to push blame on President Trump.”

“Really, this boils down to evil in people’s hearts. Satan is behind it all,” Graham said.

Greaves said he was “naturally irritated by such comments” because “such language is not harmless.”

“It lets mainstream religions off the hook for some of the darker periods of American history, despite the deep connections between slavery and Christian theology,” he said.

Lucien Greaves, co-founder of the Satanic Temple

However, while asserting that slavery in the U.S. was often “justified on scriptural grounds,” Greaves failed to mention it was Christians who were responsible for ending slavery.

“He still uses it so prolifically because it still works so well. It is the tactic of blaming others for that which you are actually, and so obviously, the guilty one,” the pastor told WND.

He continued: “While it is true that all manner of evil has been carried out ‘in the name of’ Christianity and the ‘Christian church,’ the fact of the matter remains – neither the teachings of Jesus, the contextual Word of God, or the conduct and practice of true born-again Christians support slavery, white supremacism, or acts of abject terrorism and violence. The exact opposite is the truth.”

Indeed, it was Christian activists who led the pre-Civil War abolitionist movement in America, as well as the campaign across the Atlantic led by parliamentarian William Wilberforce that brought an end to the slave trade in Britain in 1807.

Also unmentioned by the satanist was the Catholic Church’s long history of opposing slavery, including Pope Benedict XIV’s condemnation of it in 1741, Pope Pius’s demand for the end of the slave trade in 1815, Pope Gregory’s condemnation of the slave trade in 1839 and the same by Pope Leo in 1888.

William Wilberforce (1759-1833) English politician, philanthropist and a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade

Greaves painted satanism as an enlightened and modern culture, as opposed to “the monarchical, feudalistic, theocratic superstitions of old.”

However, even though such Enlightenment philosophers as Montesquieu and Rousseau did attack slavery in principle, Greaves neglects to mention it was only Christian groups that did the organizing and work that actually ended slavery.

The abolitionist movement began in America when Quakers officially renounced slavery in 1754. By the 1770s, they were joined by evangelicals, Methodists and Presbyterians.

It became a mass movement in 1787 when the British Abolition Committee was established.

Abolitionists boycotted goods from slave plantations in the Caribbean, including up to 400,000 Britons who stopped buying rum and sugar.

According to a scholarly paper on the end of the slave trade by professor John Coffey of the University of Leicester, it was the Quakers and the evangelicals who were primarily responsible for the formation of the abolitionist movement, by “building a broad coalition that included Whig and Tory politicians, Enlightenment rationalists, Romantic poets and sympathetic journalists.”

In addition to attempting to blame slavery on Christians, the satanist Greaves also blamed all modern-day white supremacy in America on something the Anti-Defamation League, or ADL, calls the “Christian Identity movement.”

However, Greaves neglected to mention the ADL characterizes the group as a small, fringe cult of conspiratorial racists and anti-Semites “whose adherents believe that white people of European descent are the descendants of the ‘Lost Tribes’ of ancient Israel.”

From the information provided by the ADL, the “Christian Identity movement” is not supported by any mainstream or prominent Christian leaders, groups or denominations.

Nonetheless, Greaves blames slavery on “Protestant radicalization.”

Spanish Conquistadors stopped the Aztec practice of using slaves for human sacrifice

He claimed, “The Ku Klux Klan is as much a religious Protestant sect as the Taliban or al-Qaeda are Muslim.”

Greaves said allowing Christian leaders “to merely disown Protestant radicalization by fiat absolves them of having to confront the problem” of slavery.

However, history shows slavery was actually abolished by those same Protestants the satanist blames, as outlined by Coffey.

“What we are witnessing,” Gallups told WND, “in this ridiculous rant by a co-founder of the Satanic Temple is the spirit of Satan himself – who is the father of all lies, deception, and wickedness – and is also called the ‘accuser of the brethren.’

“There could not be a more poignant illustration of this fact than this particular Washington Post article,” the pastor observed.

History also refutes Greaves intimation that slavery was somehow a uniquely Christian institution and survived though the ages only because of its support.

As Fox News host Tucker Carlson pointed out (in the video at the top of this story) on Aug. 15, following the violence in Charlottesville:

Up until 150 years ago when a group of brave Americans fought and died to finally put an end to it, slavery was the rule, rather than the exception around the world. And had been for thousands of years, sadly. Plato owned slaves, so did Muhammad, peace be upon him. Many African tribes held slaves and sold them. The Aztecs did, too. Before he liberated Latin American, Simon Bolivar owned slaves.

Plato, iconic philosopher and slave-owner

Slave-holding was so common among the North American Indians that the Cherokee brought their slaves with them on the Trail of Tears. And it wasn’t something they learned from European settlers. Indians were holding and trading slaves when Christopher Columbus arrived. And, by the way, he owned slaves, too. None of this is a defense of the atrocity of human bondage. It is an atrocity. The point, however, is that if we are going to judge the past by the standards of the present, if we are going to reduce a person’s life to the single worst thing he ever participated in, we had better be prepared for the consequences of that. And here’s why: 41 of the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence held slaves. James Madison, the father of the Constitution, had a plantation full of slaves. George Mason, the father of the Bill of Rights also owned slaves, unfortunately. But does that make what they wrote illegitimate?”

Gallups somberly reflected on the Washington Post column, telling WND, “The fact that a mainstream media publication has now aided the Satanic Temple’s distorted message to go worldwide is also an indication of the biblically prophesied demonic outpouring of the last days – just before the return of Jesus Christ.”

The pastor then shared in detail, just how and why he found the opinion piece so timely:

This entire article, and the convoluted bluster that it aides in promoting, reminds me of the passage in Revelation that appears to speak of the times in which we are now living: “Therefore rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short.”

Two thousand years ago, these words were prophesied in the book of Revelation concerning the last days: ‘Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to wage war against the rest of her offspring – those who keep God’s commands and hold fast their testimony about Jesus.’

The context of that passage defines ‘the woman’ as a returned Israel. The ‘rest of her offspring’ are obviously those who are born again Christians. Now – ask yourself, who is it that Satan is most viciously attacking in these prophetic days?

It is none other than the prophetically revenant nation of Israel as well as born again believers and the ‘true’ church of Jesus Christ, worldwide.

The article by Lucien Greaves does not surprise me in the least. Indeed, Satan’s time is short and quickly closing in. But, I’ve read the end of ‘The Book.’ I know who wins; and it’s not Satan or his minions.

WASHINGTON — Stephen Bannon left the White House at midday and by the afternoon was already chairing the evening editorial meeting for Breitbart News.

The exit of President Trump’s top adviser from the administration has been long rumored but it became a reality Friday when White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders issued this statement:

“White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve’s last day. We are grateful for his service and wish him the best.”

It was not clear whether Bannon resigned or was fired.

But he remained defiant and optimistic, telling WND earlier this week, “I have not yet begun to fight.”

“If there’s any confusion out there, let me clear it up: I’m leaving the White House and going to war for Trump against his opponents — on Capitol Hill, in the media, and in corporate America,” Bannon told Bloomberg News.

Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus

A source told the New York Times the departure was Bannon’s idea and that he actually resigned on Aug. 7.

The resignation was to be announced at the start of this week, but was reportedly delayed because of the raging controversy over Charlottesville.

That version of events was backed up by the top story on Brietbart, announcing Bannon’s return as executive chairman, which said, “He submitted his intention to leave the White House on August 7 of this year.”

However, CNN claimed a White House source said Bannon was fired after he refused to resign.

That source said Trump was going to fire Bannon three weeks ago but had second thoughts about terminating him and former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus at the same time.

The source also claimed that Trump was persuaded to keep Bannon by the influential chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., and other conservatives.

But Meadows reportedly dropped his opposition to dumping Bannon after he gave a freewheeling interview to a left-leaning reporter earlier this week that flatly contradicted one of the president’s most important foreign policy positions, the viability of a military option against North Korea, which his top adviser ridiculed.

Bannon also disparaged other presidential advisers’ views on China, saying they did not sufficiently recognize the threat of economic warfare waged by the regime.

On Friday, Matt Drudge, founder of the influential Drudge Report website, said Bannon “had one hell of a run,” and accurately speculated that he might return to Breitbart News, which he ran as executive chair before joining the Trump presidential campaign on Aug. 17, almost exactly one year ago.

The Times reported the former top presidential aide made it clear to friends this week that he expected to rejoin Breitbart soon, and that “he had dinner in New York City on Wednesday night with Robert Mercer, the hedge fund billionaire who is also Mr. Bannon’s chief patron, to discuss the future.”

Bannon confidant Sam Nunberg told the New York Post that once back at Breitbart, “Steve will compliment the administration when it’s right. When it’s wrong, he’ll knock their block hard.”

“Get ready for Bannon the barbarian,” a source told Axios, adding that he would unleash “fire and fury” upon enemies of the Trump agenda, using the same expression president had used to successfully deter the North Koreans from threatening Guam.

“Steve is now unchained,” a source told the Atlantic. “Fully unchained.”

“He’s going nuclear,’ said another source, adding, “You have no idea. This is gonna be really f***ing bad.”

The website said Bannon had “a range of ways to make mischief — from returning to Breitbart, to helming an outside group, to leaking dirt about rivals.”

However, Joel Pollak, senior-editor-at-large for Breitbart News, said that by cutting loose Bannon, “It may turn out to be the beginning of the end for the Trump administration, the moment Donald Trump became Arnold Schwarzenegger,” the California governor who entered office promising conservative reforms, but left, by most accounts, a failed liberal.

Pollack said “Bannon personified the Trump agenda,” and now “there is no guarantee that Trump will stick to the plan.”

Political observers considered Bannon instrumental in forming the anti-illegal immigration and anti-globalization strategies that helped elect the president.

Trump was said to chafe at that notion, because those were positions he held long before Bannon joined the 2016 election campaign.

But the president also recognized Bannon’s unique value to his success by creating the position of White House chief strategist especially for him, and making the man who had been his top campaign adviser his top presidential adviser.

Bannon, however, encountered significant opposition within the White House in his new role.

He was often reported to have bitterly feuded behind the scenes with presidential advisers who did not share his policy goals, including National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, his deputy Dina Powell, and Director of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn.

Of all the president’s advisers, Bannon has long been considered to best represent the conservative views of the GOP base voters who elected Trump, so jettisoning him had been seen as politically risky for the president.

National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and President Trump

But, Pollack asserted, “Trump’s decision to part ways with Steve Bannon can be understood as an effort to save his presidency after Charlottesville.”

Bannon has long been accused of racism and white nationalism by left-leaning critics who have provided scant evidence that he has ever actually expressed or supported such views, merely citing his strong anti-illegal immigration stance.

Democrats and critics in the major media had called on Trump to fire Bannon ever since the violent confrontation between neo-Nazi white supremacists and radical leftists in Charlottesville, Virginia, last Saturday. It turned deadly after an apparent neo-Nazi sympathizer drove a car into a crowd, killing a woman and injuring 19 others.

Trump defended Bannon, saying he is not a racist.

Bannon ridiculed the white supremacists in his interview this week with the American Prospect, calling them “losers,” part of a “fringe element,” and a “collection of clowns,” who the administration needed to help crush.

Nonetheless, Pollack and other figures as diverse as conservative commentator Ann Coulter and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., all believed Trump fired Bannon to deflect the intense criticism the president has received after Charlottesville.

Trump accurately claimed, as demonstrated in video footage, that both far-right and far-left groups were responsible for violence in Charlottesville. But Democrats and the mainstream media have been outraged Trump didn’t place all the blame for the violence on just the far-right protesters.

Coulter suggested Trump got rid of Bannon because of that pressure, tweeting, “Who will media decide @realDonaldTrump has to fire next?”

And, “STEVE BANNON OUT! Media is the most powerful branch of government.”

Pelosi did not seem placated by Trump’s gesture.

She tweeted: “Steve Bannon’s exit does not erase @realDonaldTrump’s long record of lifting up racist viewpoints & advancing repulsive policies.”

However, Pelosi has been finding racism in highly unlikely places, issuing a confused call this week for the National Park Service to revoke a permit for what she called a “white supremacist rally” set for late August in San Francisco.

It’s actually a multi-ethnic prayer rally.

Joey Gibson, the organizer of the “Patriot Prayer” rally, pointed out that not only is it not a white supremacist rally, he himself is not white.

“We have about eight speakers and only one speaker is white. We have a couple black speakers, a hispanic (speaker), we have a transexual speaker, we have a woman speaker, it’s very diverse,” Gibson told a San Francisco paper.

“It’s frustrating because right now we have these politicians who believe it is OK to lie, you know we let them get away with it. She’s going to make such a ridiculous lie, like even the fact that I’m brown, she’s going to say that I’m a white supremacist,” he added.

“You know what she’s doing,” Gibson continued, “she’s making it more dangerous for San Francisco. She’s trying to rile up her citizens so that they come down there and try to chase us out. She’s using that rhetoric. It’s just going to cause more violence and put more people in danger.”

“Antifa’s violent tactics have elicited substantial support from the mainstream left.”

“[I]n the Trump era, the (violent leftist) movement is growing like never before.”

“From Middlebury to Berkeley to Portland,” the use of violence to deny “Trump supporters their political rights … is on the rise, especially among young people.”

Cammeron discovered, while the “violence and murder of a protester in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend has been attributed to far-right elements … many conservatives say blame should be shared by (the violent leftist group) Antifa.”

That was confirmed from the scene by New York Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg, who tweeted, “The hard left seemed as hate-filled as alt-right. I saw club-wielding ‘antifa’ beating white nationalists being led out of the park.”

That insight ran counter to the major media narrative that what happened over the weekend in Charlottesville was a prime example of right-wing violence.

That’s because it was a rare clash of actual extremists, due to the presence of white supremacists among the rightists protesting the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville.

However, Antifa and other leftists actually have been regularly attacking mainstream Republicans ever since President Trump became a candidate.

Simply put, the difference is that there were never any right-wing mobs attacking Hillary Clinton supporters, while attacks on Trump supporters by leftists became a familiar sight during the 2016 presidential campaign. And long after.

And, while there is no evidence of a growing right-wing extremist movement, even left-leaning journalists have found abundant evidence of a rapidly growing violent left-wing movement, as well as signs of it going mainstream, along with an increasing normalization of political violence.

Anti-Trump protest in New York on Dec. 9

Although the name is supposed to stand for “anti-fascist,” John Hinderaker of the Powerline blog described Antifa as actually “a fascist group that has also rioted at Washington, Berkeley, Seattle and other places, (that) typically wears black clothes and masks, arms its members with baseball bats, ax handles and 2x4s, and often attacks random people on the street.”

He called the group’s behavior in Charlottesville as “not much better than usual,” while adding rhetorically, “Who, exactly, brings bats and clubs to a demonstration?”

The left held 47 protests, many violent, against Trump from the day he announced his candidacy for president on June 16, 2015, until his election on Nov. 9, 2016.

That doesn’t include dozens of furious anti-Trump protests, some of which became riots, immediately following the election, in major cities around the nation and the around the world.

In his Atlantic piece, Beinart recalled how leftists “punched and threw eggs at people exiting a Trump rally in San Jose, California,” in June last year, which a website associated with Antifa celebrated as “righteous beatings.”

And how, a few weeks later, 10 people were stabbed at a counter-demonstration by Anti-Fascist Action Sacramento.

Included among all the violent protests after the inauguration of Trump as president, WND reported on the outright call for violence by a Black Lives Matter speaker at an anti-Trump rally in Seattle on Jan. 31.

(Caution: Strong Language – this video contains repeated obscenities)

A woman who described herself as a preschool teacher declared, “We need to start killing people.”

Beinart further described how leftist violence has actually increased since Trump became president.

In Portland, Oregon, “Masked protesters smashed store windows during multiday demonstrations following Trump’s election,” then, at another rally on June 4, “Antifa activists threw bricks until the police dispersed them with stun grenades and tear gas.”

“Demonstrators have interrupted so many city-council meetings that in February, the council met behind locked doors.”

Anti-Trump protest on Nov. 11, 2016

“A similar cycle has played out at U.C. Berkeley,” observed Beinart. “In February, masked antifascists broke store windows and hurled Molotov cocktails and rocks at police during a rally against the planned speech by Milo Yiannopoulos.”

“The result,” Beinart concluded, “is a level of sustained political street warfare not seen in the U.S. since the 1960s.”

It is, no doubt, because of the increasing violence by the left, that President Trump has insisted on condemning the violence “by both sides” in the clash over the weekend in Charlottesville.

That has enraged the establishment media, as demonstrated at an explosive press conference by the president on Tuesday at Trump Tower in New York.

The major media, Democrats and even establishment Republicans such as Mitt Romney, Mitch McConnell and John Kasich have insisted on placing all the blame for the weekend violence on the neo-Nazis at the Charlottesville protests, while ignoring legions of violent leftist counter-protesters.

“What about the ‘alt-left’ that came charging them?” Trump rhetorically asked a combative press.

Antifa at Charlottesville, Virginia, rally (Photo: Twitter)

“Excuse me. What about the alt-left that came charging at the – as you say, the alt-right? Do they have any semblance of guilt? … Let me ask you this. What about the fact they came charging – that they came charging with clubs in their hands, swinging clubs? Do they have any problem? I think they do.”

“You had a group on one side and you had a group on the other, and they came at each other with clubs and it was vicious and it was horrible. And it was a horrible thing to watch. But there is another side,” insisted the president, adding, “I think there’s blame on both sides.”

Trump also maintained, “But you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides … You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.”

“Not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. Not all of those people were white supremacists, by any stretch,” declared the president.

Trump had stated a demonstrable truth, recorded by cameras, that there was violence from both sides. But, for some reason, that assertion enraged the press, which responded by trying to portray the president as defending the Nazis.

“Do you think what you call the alt-left is the same as neo-Nazis?” asked one reporter.

“Mr. President, are you putting what you’re calling the alt-left and white supremacists on the same moral plane?” asked another.

“I’m not putting anybody on a moral plane,” shot back the president. “What I’m saying is this: You had a group on one side and you had a group on the other and they came at each other with clubs. And it was vicious and it was horrible and it was a horrible thing to watch. But there is another side.”

“I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists,” the president explained, “because they should be condemned totally – but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, OK? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.”

In other words, the president described a mix of good and bad people among the protesters on the right. And then he described the counter-protesters on the left in the same terms.

Trump observed the counter-protesters were a mix of ordinary people and violent leftists: “You had some fine people, but you also had troublemakers and you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats.”

But the press insisted that was making a moral equivalence between the ordinary counter-protesters on the left and the Nazi protesters on the right, while ignoring the violent leftists entirely.

(Leftist protesters topple a statue of a Confederate soldier, then kick and spit on it, Monday in Durham, N.C. Four people were arrested Wednesday on various charges, including rioting and property damage.)

Despite the fact journalists have traditionally regarded telling both sides of a story the most important part of their job, an editorial in the Washington Post on Wednesday ridiculed the president for saying there are “two sides to a story,” claiming that was a “false moral equivalency.”

After acknowledging the president had “complained that not everyone who came to the ‘Unite the Right’ rally was a neo-Nazi or white nationalist,” the Post then incongruously claimed, “These comments suggest very strongly that the president of the United States sees moral equivalence between Nazis and those who oppose Nazis.”

In other words, despite the president’s explicit condemnation of the Nazis, his recognition that there were non-Nazis among the protesters on the right was attacked by the Post as support of the Nazis.

And, despite that glaring contradiction, that is the charge now leveled by the president throughout the establishment media, Democrats and establishment Republicans.

In Tuesday’s increasingly surreal press conference, one reporter actually asked the president of the United States, “Are you against the Confederacy?”

But, noting that the nation’s first president was a slave owner, Trump countered: “So, this week it’s Robert E. Lee. I noticed that Stonewall Jackson’s coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next week?

“And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You know, you all – you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?”

“It’s easy to see where this is going,” because, “Five of our first seven presidents were slave owners,” observed WND Managing Editor David Kupelian, the best-selling author of WND Books’ “The Snapping of the American Mind.”

He continued, “After the Civil War memorials and statues are torn down all across America, what will the left’s next target be? It’s obvious: Memorials commemorating America’s founding generation – people like George Washington, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, all of whom owned slaves.”

That was echoed Tuesday night by Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, who observed 41 of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence were slave owners.

He noted slavery was once so ubiquitous that even Native Americans such as the Cherokees owned slaves, long before the arrival of Columbus.

And that if slavery was used as the standard by which to judge historical figures from the past, then no one was safe, including Lincoln.

Indeed, the Lincoln Memorial, dedicated to the president who freed the slaves, was defaced Tuesday with red spray paint that appeared read, “F— law.”

“But,” further observed Kupelian, “this is not, at its deepest level, even really about slavery or racism. What the left is really intent on is annihilating and replacing America’s core operating system – the Constitution.”

“Leftist true believers have contempt for the Constitution because it prescribes a system of very limited government, while what they want is an all-powerful government – with them in charge. Thus they will attempt to overturn the Constitution – like a hated Civil War statue – by discrediting and demonizing those ‘white slave-owners’ who gave that Constitution to us.”

Hatred for traditional America and ordinary Americans by the left can be seen rising along with its use of violence.

Anti-Trump protest in Portland on June 4.

Beinart described how the leftist group Direct Action Alliance targeted Portland’s annual Rose Festival because of the Republican Party of Multnomah County planned to take part.

Direct Action Alliance declared, “Fascists plan to march through the streets,” and warned, “Nazis will not march through Portland unopposed.”

The reporter described how, “The alliance said it didn’t object to the Multnomah GOP itself, but to ‘fascists’ who planned to infiltrate its ranks.” Yet, Beinart found the leftists also denouncing mainstream marchers with “Trump flags” and “red MAGA hats” who could “normalize support” for a candidate who was “waging a war of hate, racism and prejudice.”

In other words, hatred of mainstream Republicans was justified because of their ostensible enabling of the “racist” Trump.

Another leftist group, Oregon Students Empowered, created a Facebook page called “Shut down fascism! No nazis in Portland!”

Essentially, everyday Republicans had become the same as Nazis in the eyes of the radical left.

To make that sentiment crystal clear, Markos Moulitsas, the leftist founder of the Daily Kos website, tweeted Sunday, “NRA and American conservatives/Nazis are one and the same.”

Markos Moulitsas

To remove any doubt about what he meant, Moulitsas added, “Media and so many still want to pretend we don’t have a neo-Nazi in the White House.”

So what’s going on here?

How did America so suddenly arrive at the point where leftists are accusing mainstream Republicans, and the president they elected, of being Nazis? And using that to justify violent attacks?

It didn’t really happen overnight, according to one well-known political observer on the right.

“What we’re witnessing is the fruit of decades of our federally captured public education system. Given hundreds of billions of dollars to spend, public educators in general chose to scuttle teaching objective knowledge facts and information.”

She continued, “In its place they’ve indoctrinated our kids with Marxist/statist/totalitarian attitudes, values and beliefs. The result is a young populace in love with its self-righteousness, and clueless of its ignorance of objective fact.”

Indoctrinating students with leftist values has been long-documented by numerous scholarly studies that have detailed the “long march” by Cultural Marxists through American academia, the media, Hollywood and Washington, ever since the end of World War II.

Former Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn.

Those studies include the critically acclaimed book “The Devil’s Pleasure Palace,” by Disney screenwriter and New York Post op-ed columnist Michael Walsh, who told WND last year that the problem lay in Critical Theory, the brainchild of the Frankfurt School, which has come to dominate thinking in American academia with its call to question any and everything.

Walsh said the theory in practice has become an attack on everything of value. He described the real goal of Critical Theory as an attempt to demolish Western civilization.

The author described the work of the Frankfurt School scholars as grounded in an ideology that performed “an unremitting assault on Western values and institutions, including Christianity, the family, conventional sexual morality, nationalistic patriotism … Literally nothing was sacred.”

Those observations were parallel to Bachmann’s, who told WND Wednesday, “For decades our public schools have systematically removed America’s Judeo-Christian foundations. An easily led mob is the result.”

“Emotion and virtue signaling have replaced knowledge and reason,” she added. “As the scripture teaches, when the foundations are removed, what can the people do?”

There is evidence that reason is quite literally being removed from American academia, and that it is increasingly seen as racist by academics.

Why racist?

Plato, white philosopher and slave-owner

Because reason was invented by white people, according to philosophy and religion professor John Caputo of Syracuse University.

“I think that what modern philosophers call ‘pure’ reason – the Cartesian ego cogito and Kant’s transcendental consciousness – is a white male Euro-Christian construction,” said Caputo in an interview with the New York Times in 2015.

He explained that “whiteness” had infected reason with racism because such expressions as the “lily whiteness” of “pure reason” were prejudiced.

And that philosophers had equated whiteness with rationality and that everything irrational was “colored.”

The bottom line is American academia has reached the point where it is teaching students that reason is racist and not logical or moral.

And that is not unrelated to the rise in leftist violence, according to Bachmann.

“Without change, violence will continue to increase,” she asserted. “If our public education system re-embraced teaching objective knowledge, facts and information, it would take a generation to see the results.”

Despite painting a bleak outlook, Bachmann was not without hope.

“If America experienced a spiritual reawakening of the God of the Bible we could see a fairly immediate change.”

And she counseled faith.

“That is why the best response is not to despair and curse the darkness, but instead to fervently apply ourselves to prayer beseeching heaven for divine intervention.”

WASHINGTON – President Trump issued a forceful condemnation of white supremacists in the wake of the deadly tragedy in Charlottesville, Virginia, after critics claimed his previous remarks blasting “hatred, bigotry and violence” had not been strong enough.

“Racism is evil,” President Trump bluntly stated at the White House Monday, having flown back to Washington during the middle of a vacation in New Jersey.

“And those who cause violence are criminal and thugs,” the president continued, “including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.”

On Saturday, the president condemned “hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides” after protests by groups including white supremacists turned into violent clashes with counter-protests by groups that included the radical-leftist Antifa.

Democrats and members of the establishment media strongly criticized the president for not specifically condemning white supremacists.

However, Trump reiterated: “As I said on Saturday, we condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence. It has no place in America.”

“And, as I have said so many times before,” he continued, “no matter the color of our skin, we all live under the same laws. We all salute the same great flag. And we are all made by the same almighty God.

“We must love each other, show affection for each other and unite together in condemnation of hatred, bigotry and violence. We must rediscover the bonds of love and loyalty that bring us together as Americans,” Trump said.

The major media’s tenacity in wanting to hold Trump accountable for the weekend violence was vividly evidenced in an exchange between the president and CNN White House reporter Jim Acosta.

After the reporter badgered the president as to why he “didn’t condemn those hate groups by name over the weekend,” Trump eventually pointed a finger directly at Acosta and said, “You’re fake news.”

This was their full exchange:

Acosta: “Mr President, can you explain why you didn’t condemn those hate groups by name over the weekend?”

President Trump: “They have been condemned. They have been condemned.”

Acosta: “Why are we not having a press conference today?”

President Trump: “We had a press conference. We just had a press conference.”

Acosta: “Can we ask you some more questions then, sir?”

President Trump: “It doesn’t bother me at all. But I like real news, not fake news. You’re fake news.”

Watch the full exchange between President Trump and CNN’s Acosta:

Trump had made his remarks condemning hate groups in Charlottesville during a hastily arranged White House event, shortly after noon.

The exchange with Acosta occurred at the end of a previously planned 3:00 o’clock media event, in which the president signed a memo cracking down on China’s “laws, policies, practices, and actions related to intellectual property, innovation, and technology.”

Reporters were upset they were not permitted to ask questions even though the White House had termed the event a press conference.

But Trump, in his comments to Acosta, indicated he knew what questions would have been asked, and that he had already answered them.

During his appearance earlier in the day, the president also announced the FBI “has opened a civil rights investigation into the deadly car attack that killed one innocent American and wounded 20 others” in Charlottesville.

Heather Heyer was killed when a protester drove a car into counter-protesters.

“Her death fills us with grief, and we send her family our thoughts, our prayers, and our love,” the president said.

See President Trump’s full remarks:

Trump said Heyer and two troopers who died in a helicopter crash “embody the goodness and decency of our nation.”

“In times such as these, America has always shown its true character: responding to hate with love, division with unity, and violence with an unwavering resolve for justice,” said Trump.

“We will spare no resource in fighting so that every American child can grow up free from violence and fear,” he said.

Trump concluded, “We will defend and protect the sacred rights of all Americans, and we will work together so that every citizen in this blessed land is free to follow their dreams in their hearts, and to express the love and joy in their souls.”

WASHINGTON ¬– Former national security officials are calling for the firing of National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster as he steps up a purge of National Security Council officials who disagree with him but who share the foreign policy views of President Trump.

McMaster should be fired because of his “serial insubordination and personnel decisions” that “undermine” Trump, according to Frank Gaffney, who served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy under President Reagan.

McMaster has reportedly blocked an attempted purge of holdovers from the Obama administration within the National Security Council, or NSC, while removing a half-dozen key Trump loyalists, three in just the last three weeks.

He even was said to have explicitly prohibited the use of the word “holdover” within the NSC, insisting “there’s no such thing as a holdover,” just loyal career staffers.

Trump has apparently been kept in the dark about much of the purge of his allies in the NSC.

But as reports about it spilled into the press over recent weeks, the president, who met with McMaster on Thursday, has been considering replacing his national security adviser with CIA Director Mike Pompeo, according to the New York Times.

McMaster is increasingly out of synch with the president virtually across the board on key issues, including policies on ISIS, Syria, Russia, Afghanistan and Iran.

Sources told Politico the NSC chief has sought to “stay-the-course” on Bush and Obama policies “only to find fierce pushback from Trump himself.” Trump was particularly irate his advisers could not find a way to withdraw from Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, which McMaster supports.

“Everything the president wants to do, McMaster opposes,” a former senior official told the Daily Caller. “Trump wants to get us out of Afghanistan — McMaster wants to go in. Trump wants to get us out of Syria — McMaster wants to go in. Trump wants to deal with the China issue — McMaster doesn’t. Trump wants to deal with the Islam issue — McMaster doesn’t.” He added, “It is incredible to watch it happening right in front of your face. Absolutely stunning.”

Adding fuel to the fire, Circa reported Thursday that McMaster personally wrote a letter, without the president’s knowledge or consent, allowing Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, to keep her top-secret security clearance and unfettered access to classified information.

Former National Security Adviser Susan Rice with former President Barack Obama (Photo: Twitter)

In June, Trump blasted the revelation that Rice was one of the Obama senior officials who unmasked the identities of members of his transition team targeted in the Russia probe, calling it evidence of surveillance on him by the previous administration and a “massive story.”

“I know that the president isn’t a big fan of what McMaster’s doing,” said a former official. “I don’t understand why he’s allowing a guy who is subverting his foreign policy at every turn to remain in place.” he added.

“Such disloyal and subversive behavior from McMaster includes undermining the President’s policies on virtually every important foreign and defense policy issue and purging staff members who support these issues, while retaining or hiring others – including large numbers of Obama holdovers – who do not,” said Gaffney in a press release from his organization, the Center for Security Policy.

His colleague, Clare Lopez, told WND, “The position of national security adviser to the president is too important to be held by someone so thoroughly at odds with both the president himself and his key national security policy positions.”

McMaster “obviously” does not agree with President Trump “on virtually any aspect of U.S. foreign policy, from Russia to the Middle East, especially Iran, Israel, or the GCC face-off against the new Islamic Jihad Axis of Iran, Qatar & Turkey,” added Lopez, who is vice president for research and analysis at the Center for Security Policy, after spending two decades in the field as a CIA operations officer and serving as an instructor for military intelligence and special forces.

Middle East analyst Clare Lopez of the Center for Security Policy

Referring to the most recent analyst fired by McMaster, Lopez said, “Purging those NSC officials – like Rich Higgins – who are most knowledgeable about these issues, as well as aligned with the president, is enormously detrimental to U.S. national security and needs to be reversed under a national security adviser more in tune with President Trump’s own policy agenda.”

Former DHS frontline officer and intelligence expert Philip Haney is more than familiar with long-serving bureaucrats in the national security bureaucracy. Although highly decorated for his service, when the whistleblower tried to warn about specific terror threats, as well as the infiltration of jihadi-sympathizers within the government, he found himself under investigation by his own agency before retiring honorably last year.

Haney told WND “this is deja vu all over again” and the environment in the national security community “is very similar to what it was like under the Obama administration,” except that under the former president there was “the additional ominous awareness that any alleviating remedy was unlikely, if not totally impossible,” whereas Trump may reverse course.

As to whether the president will fire McMaster, Haney said, “My sense is that he is very aware of what is going on, and that he will do something, sooner than later.”

“President Trump is known to be an astute observer, but also known as someone who doesn’t give away a lot of clues to his what final decisions will be. He keeps people guessing,” added the DHS founding member, who is the author WND Book’s bestseller, “See Something, Say Nothing,” chronicling his experiences in the national security community.

This is how we got to the point where the president has a national security adviser who disagrees with him on virtually everything about national security.

According to Jerusalem Post managing editor and Mideast expert Caroline Glick, after previous National Security Adviser Michael Flynn resigned on Feb. 13, Trump, “under terrible pressure” to find a replacement, hired McMaster after a half-hour interview, and on the recommendation of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who also disagrees with the president on most key security issues.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

Then, in his first meeting with entire NSC staff in February, McMaster declared the term “radical Islamic terrorism” not helpful because terrorists were “un-Islamic.”

That is the exact position taken by Obama and one repeatedly and explicitly ridiculed by Trump. It is a position that critics have noted would make the Islamic State not Islamic, by definition.

McMaster first protected the entrenched bureaucracy in the NSC, then began purging the Trump loyalists, a veteran GOP foreign policy hand told the Free Beacon.

The source said the reason McMaster didn’t want staffers using the word holdover was because “he didn’t want anyone pointing out how Obama loyalists were still in place, undermining President Trump, and leaking against him.”

The Free Beacon reported those holdover staffers are said to include “key NSC personnel who work directly for senior Obama aide Ben Rhodes, who has become a central suspect in the leaks of damaging classified information to the press.”

Indeed, the NSC has apparently leaked classified information to the press at such an unprecedented rate under McMaster, Congress issued a report warning of dire consequences.

McMaster has targeted Trump loyalists in his NSC staff purge because they largely disagree with him on every important policy, including those on Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, ISIS, climate change and Cuba.

More purges are said to be in the works.

Trump loyalists already removed or fired from the NSC:

Derek Harvey, top Mideast adviser

Rich Higgins, director of strategic planning

Ezra Cohen-Watnick, senior official in the intelligence division

Tera Dahl, deputy chief of staff

KT McFarlane, deputy national security adviser

Adam Lovinger, analyst and strategist

Harvey was removed by McMaster at the end of July for pushing to scrap the Iran deal, which Trump strongly wants to do. He may be reassigned to another job in the administration.

Higgins was fired last month for a memo warning of the Islamist/cultural Marxist nexus and the threat of globalists, and for urging the purge of Obama loyalists from the NSC. McMaster reportedly went on the “warpath” over the memo and fired Higgins after discovering the author by searching the NSC’s email system.

Cohen-Watnick was forced to resign last week when he reportedly lost the support of senior adviser Jared Kushner. The backing of the president’s son in law had kept Cohen-Watnick in his position when McMaster previously tried to fire him. A White House statement acknowledged his vision for the NSC conflicted with McMaster’s.

Dahl was reassigned to a position outside of the White House last month when McMaster wanted to replace her with his own appointee.

Derek Harvey

McFarlane, who had been in the NSC since the beginning of the Trump administration, was nudged out in April and offered the ambassadorship to Singapore.

Also leaving the NSC was Victoria Coates, senior director for strategic assessments, who was reassigned last week, reportedly at her request, to the Middle East peace team.

Additionally, top presidential adviser Steve Bannon was pushed out of the NSC principals committee after McMaster arrived.

Meanwhile, “top Obama officials continue to come and go in and out of the White House compound as they please,” according to Conservative Review.

That includes Obama’s “ISIS czar”, Robert Malley, who, for some reason, continues to brief National Security Council staff.

Shockingly, he reportedly even has been given the power to fire Trump loyalists on the NSC.

McMaster, Glick wrote: “[A]llows anti-Israel, pro-Muslim Brotherhood, pro-Iran Obama people like Robert Malley to walk around the NSC and tell people what to do and think. He has left Ben (reporters know nothing about foreign policy and I lied to sell them the Iran deal) Rhodes’ and Valerie Jarrett’s people in place.”

It may just as difficult to understand just why Trump hired McMaster as it is to predict whether he will keep the Army lieutenant general as his NSC chief.

(Listen to the audio of investigative reporter Seymour Hersh blasting intelligence officials for fabricating the story that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia. WARNING: The interview contains obscenities and foul language. Listener discretion is advised.)

WASHINGTON – The entire Russia collusion story was a fiction made up by intelligence chiefs who lied about President Trump, and lied to President Obama and the media, according to a person on a just-released audio recording who is almost certainly legendary Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh.

Further, the person who recorded the audio is almost certainly financier Ed Butowsky, who hired private investigator Rod Wheeler to investigate the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich last July.

Wheeler filed a defamation lawsuit against Butowsky and Fox News on Tuesday over a story the network retracted about the investigation.

Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh

The text of Wheeler’s lawsuit described a conversation between Hersh and Butowsky in which the reporter said: “I have somebody on the inside who will go and read a file for me. And I know this person is unbelievably accurate and careful. He’s a very high level guy.”

WND did some digging and discovered those identical words appear on the audio recording, apparently verifying they were spoken by Hersh and taped by Butowsky. Judging by a report in the Washington Post, the conversation happened during, or before, February.

The audio was first posted late Tuesday afternoon on a site called Big League Politics then went viral after it was linked on Twitter by WikiLeaks.

Hersh, himself, acknowledged speaking with Butkowsy, during an NPR interview Monday in which he referred to the Seth Rich angle as gossip and said Butowsky “took two and two and made 45 out of it.”

But Hersh did not disavow what he said about the Russia collusion narrative.

On the recording, the reporter called the entire story that the Trump presidential campaign and transition team colluded with Russia “a Brennan operation.”

Hersh accused former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and current NSA Director Michael Rogers of peddling “disinformation” and misleading Obama and the press.

Former CIA Director John Brennan

And he added, “Trump’s not wrong to think they all f—ing lied about him.”

Hersh suggested Rogers falsely told the press that American intelligence agencies even knew who in the Russian military intelligence service “leaked it,” in apparent reference to the hacked Democratic emails that embarrassed the Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign.

He also dismissively called Brennan an “a—hole,” Rogers a “f—ing moron” and Clapper “sort of a better guy but not a rocket scientist.”

Hersh ascribed a simple motive to the subterfuge by the top spies: They wanted to keep their jobs by assuring Clinton won the presidential election.

“With Trump they’re gone. You know, they’re done – they’re going to live on their pensions, they’re not going to make it.”

Hersh also explained why the story came to dominate the news cycle, portraying his colleagues in the establishment media as, essentially, too gullible.

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper

“I worked at the New York Times for years and they have smart guys but they are totally beholden on sources. If the president or the head of the (unintelligible) tells them something they actually believe it,” he said.

And, speaking of those highly placed sources, he said, “These guys run the f—ing Times.”

Hersh won the Pulitzer Prize in 1970 for exposing the My Lai massacre and has become one of the nation’s best-known and most-accomplished investigative reporters.

According to his biography in the New Yorker, in addition to Hersh’s Pulitzer, his journalism and publishing awards include five George Polk Awards, two National Magazine Awards, and more than a dozen other prizes for investigative reporting.

Hersh made on-the-record comments critical of the Russia collusion story to The Intercept on Jan. 25, flatly saying he did not believe the assessment by the intelligence community that Russian President Vladimir Putin orchestrated a hacking campaign designed to elect Trump.

He also blasted the major media for uncritically accepting the claims by Obama’s intelligence officials as facts.

“The way they (the media) behaved on the Russia stuff was outrageous,” Hersh said two days after Trump was inaugurated. “They were just so willing to believe stuff.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump

Hersh told the Intercept that if he had been covering the story, “I would have made Brennan into a buffoon. A yapping buffoon in the last few days. Instead, everything is reported seriously.”

The reporter zeroed in on questionable aspects of the intelligence assessment that would become highly relevant when Brennan and Clapper finally testified before congressional committees months after the inauguration of Trump.

“What does an assessment mean?,” asked Hersh. “It’s not a national intelligence estimate. If you had a real estimate, you would have five or six dissents. One time they said 17 agencies all agreed. Oh really? The Coast Guard and the Air Force — they all agreed on it?”

He continued, “And it was outrageous and nobody did that story. An assessment is simply an opinion. If they had a fact, they’d give it to you. An assessment is just that. It’s a belief.”

Hersh’s critique of the flimsiness of the intelligent assessment parallels the analysis made by a prominent former CIA analyst after Clapper revealed during a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on May 8, that it was not true that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies had compiled, and agreed with, the findings.

As WND reported, Clapper not only revealed that just three agencies, the NSA, FBI and CIA, were involved in the assessment.

He also revealed that those agencies did not do the assessment themselves.

Former CIA officer Fred Fleitz

The analysis and conclusion were made by an irregular and hand-picked panel of what were called experts, who actually may have been, according to former CIA officer Fred Fleitz, highly politicized.

Fleitz served in U.S. national security positions for 25 years at the CIA, DIA, Department of State and the House Intelligence Committee staff.

As someone intimately familiar with the inner workings of the intelligence community, Fleitz penned an article for Fox News on May 12, that spelled out what really happened.

He had written previously that when the U.S. Intelligence Community issued an ‘Intelligence Community Assessment’ (ICA) on January 6, 2017, that found Russia deliberately interfered in the 2016 presidential election to benefit Trump’s candidacy, he “was suspicious because it reached unusually clear judgments on a politically explosive issue with no dissenting views.”

Fleitz was then surprised to hear Clapper explain in his May testimony that two dozen or so “seasoned experts” were “handpicked” from the contributing agencies and drafted the ICA “under the aegis of his former office” (the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.)

Describing just how unusual that was, he said, “Hand-picking a handful of analysts from just three intelligence agencies to write such a controversial assessment went against standing rules to vet such analyses throughout the Intelligence Community within its existing structure.”

Furthermore, “The idea of using hand-picked intelligence analysts selected through some unknown process to write an assessment on such a politically sensitive topic carries a strong stench of politicization.”

Fleitz also noted that former FBI Director James Comey had testified that the report’s conclusion of Russian interference was based on logic, not evidence.

Former FBI Director James Comey

“So we now know,” surmised the former CIA officer, “this was a subjective judgment made by a hand-picked group of intelligence analysts.”

“One has to ask how these hand-picked analysts were picked. Who picked them? Who was excluded?”

Fleitz called it a major problem that “the process gave John Brennan, CIA’s hyper-partisan former director, enormous influence over the drafting of the ICA.”

“Given Brennan’s scathing criticism of Mr. Trump before and after the election, he should have had no role whatsoever in the drafting of this assessment. Instead, Brennan probably selected the CIA analysts who worked on the ICA and reviewed and approved their conclusions.”

In other words, it seems Fleitz thought it not impossible that Brennan rigged the report to arrive at the conclusion he wanted.

Which makes Brennan’s testimony before the House Intelligence Committee on May 24, all the more relevant, because even though he testified he saw no evidence of collusion, the former CIA director admitted it was he who set in motion the FBI’s investigation into whether the Trump team colluded with the Russians.

Fleitz wants Congress to investigate the spies. He wrote:

“The unusual way that the January 6, 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment was drafted raises major questions as to whether it was rigged by the Obama administration to produce conclusions that would discredit the election outcome and Mr. Trump’s presidency. The House and Senate Intelligence Committees therefore should add investigations of whether this ICA was politicized to their investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.”

The terse White House statement said Scaramucci wanted to give Kelly “a clean slate and the ability to build his own team.”

Scarmucci’s time on the job was so brief, he was released two weeks before his official start date of Aug. 15.

Kellyanne Conway, current counselor to the president and frequent spokesperson for the administration on television, is under consideration to become the next communications director, according to what a White House source told the Daily Caller.

The latest White House staff shakeup followed the firing of chief of staff Reince Priebus on Friday, and his replacement by Kelly. That followed an obscenity-laced tirade against Preibus by Scaramucci in the New Yorker last week.

And that was preceded by the resignation of press secretary Sean Spicer, after the hiring of Scaramucci. And then the promotion of his deputy, Sarah Sanders, to press secretary.

The White House portrayed Scaramucci’s bombastic interview as pivotal in the new hire’s quick dismissal.

“The president certainly felt that Anthony’s comments were inappropriate for a person in that position,” said Sanders at Monday’s daily press briefing.

The New York Times reported the firing of Scaramucci was the president’s decision but that Kelly had requested the removal of the wealthy New York financier.

The Times also reported Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general who previously served as Homeland Security secretary, made clear to staff members that he was in charge, at an early Monday morning meeting.

Scaramucci had pointed out in a press conference after his hiring that he would report directly to the president, not to the chief of staff, who, at the time, was Priebus.

However, Sanders said at the press briefing that all White House staff will now report to Kelly.

The Times said the new chief of staff told aides “he intended to impose a new sense of order and operational discipline that had been absent under his predecessor.”

Former White House Chief of Staff, Reince Priebus

There had been initial speculation Scaramucci might stay at the White House in another position because of the president’s fondness for him, but Sanders later clarified the former communications director “does not have a role at this time in this administration.”

“Anthony Scaramucci will be leaving his role as White House Communications Director. Mr. Scaramucci felt it was best to give Chief of Staff John Kelly a clean slate and the ability to build his own team. We wish him all the best.”

Scaramucci’s primary mission seemed to be to stop the series of leaks to the press by White House staffers, threatening to fire “everyone” in the press office unless they ended, causing one staffer to resign last week.

Reports had suggested Trump was initially pleased with Scarmucci’s vitriolic and obscenity-filled New Yorker interview that characterized Priebus as “paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac,” while also targeting top presidential aide Steve Bannon.

Ivanka Trump ttends an audience with Pope Francis at the Vatican on May 24, 2017. (Photo by Vatican Pool)

But the Times reported that over the weekend the president “quickly soured on the wisecracking, Long Island-bred former hedge fund manager, and so had his family.”

Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, and her husband, top presidential aide Jared Kusher, reportedly pushed the president to hire Scaramucci in order to get rid of Priebus. But, the paper said, Trump’s family and the president “began to see the brash actions of his subordinate as a political liability and potential embarrassment.”

Kelly’s opposition to Scaramucci was said to be the clincher.

The Washington Post reported Kelly regarded Scaramucci’s New Yorker interview as “abhorrent and embarrassing for the president,” and that the new chief of staff wanted to “change the culture of the White House and to signal to staff that their comments always reflect on the president.”

Former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer (Photo: Twitter)

All of these rapid changes followed the resignation of Spicer as press secretary 10 days ago in protest over the hiring of Scaramucci as communications director. Spicer had been doing double duty, also acting as communications director after the resignation of Mike Dubke two months ago. And Dubke had replaced Jason Miller, who resigned during the transition before even being sworn in.

Just as new press secretary Sanders said in the White House statement that Scaramucci wanted to give Kelly “a clean slate and the ability to build his own team,” after his resignation, Spicer had said he wanted “to give the president and the new team a clean slate.”

Spicer had said he would stay at the White House through August. It was not immediately clear if he will now stay longer.

Spicer was reportedly standing at the side of Sanders when she informed the communications staff of about 40 people on Monday that Scaramucci was out.

Early Monday morning, before the latest White House personnel shuffle, Trump had tweeted: “Highest Stock Market EVER, best economic numbers in years, unemployment lowest in 17 years, wages rising, border secure, S.C.: No WH chaos!”

WASHINGTON – Something very odd but extremely significant just happened in American politics, in practically the blink of an eye.

The establishment media have gone from virtual 24/7 coverage of the narrative that President Trump colluded with Russia to crickets, and they did it overnight.

How far has Russia fallen off the media’s radar? So far, that, in a jaw-dropping role-reversal, it is actually the White House now pushing the story on the media.

And why is the White House suddenly embracing the Russia story? Because it is now poised to boomerang on the Democrats, big time, following a pivotal Senate Judiciary committee hearing on Thursday.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders

At the end of Thursday’s daily press briefing, a visibly bemused White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders chided reporters, “You guys love to talk about Russia, and there’s been nonstop coverage. And the one day that there might have been a question on Russia, there wasn’t.”

So she raised the topic herself, noting, “[T]here was public testimony that further discredited the phony dossier that’s been the source of so much of the fake news and conspiracy theories. And we learned that the firm that produced it was also being paid by the Russians.”

That’s because Thursday’s testimony indicated the entire Russia collusion story may be turned on its head in fantastic fashion.

While there is still no evidence the president or his associates colluded with Russia against Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, evidence may be emerging that there was collusion by Democrats with Russians against Trump.

The FBI investigation into possible Trump team collusion with Russia seems to have been based entirely, as WND has reported, on an infamous dossier of dubious veracity.

After the Senate hearing, a Capitol Hill source with knowledge of the investigations told WND, “Democrats have peddled the dossier’s claims, but if it turns out Democrat groups actually cooperated with Kremlin-linked individuals in compiling the dossier or funding its compilation, they may have to explain that under oath.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

That would make it the Democrats who colluded with Russia.

Not Trump.

And that would turn upside down the Democrats’ entire six-month relentless and vociferous effort to discredit the Trump presidency.

That dossier is key. As are its origins.

Filled with errors and discredited salacious allegations against Trump, the dossier was compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, who wildly claimed the hackers who obtained the leaked Democratic Party emails were “paid by both Trump’s team and the Kremlin.”

The dossier was commissioned and peddled by a company called Fusion GPS. Aimed at Trump, it is now backfiring on Democrats.

As WND has reported in depth, top Democrats on investigative committees and former Obama administration intelligence official have had to admit repeatedly they have seen no evidence of collusion between the Trump presidential campaign or administration and Moscow.

As former WND Washington bureau chef Paul Sperry outlined in the New York Post in June, although Fusion GPS describes itself as a “research and strategic intelligence firm,” congressional sources said it’s actually an opposition-research group for Democrats.

As Sperry documented:

Clinton allies “bankrolled” Fusion GPS.

An unidentified Democratic ally of then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was paying Fusion GPS when it hired Steele “to dig up dirt on Trump.”

Co-founder Peter R. Fritsch contributed at least $1,000 to the Hillary Victory Fund in September 2016, “while Fusion GPS was quietly shopping the dirty dossier on Trump around Washington.”

Co-founder Glenn Simpson did opposition research for a former Clinton White House operative before joining Fusion GPS.

Simpson refused to testify before the Senate Judiciary committee Thursday.

The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel reported, “Word is Mr. Simpson has made clear he will appear for a voluntary committee interview only if he is not specifically asked who hired him to dig dirt on Mr. Trump.”

And, “Democrats are going to the mat for him over that demand. Those on the Judiciary Committee pointedly did not sign letters in which Mr. Grassley demanded that Fusion reveal who hired it.”

Strassel also observed that although the left was “salivating at the prospect of watching two Trump insiders,” Donald Trump Jr. and Paul Manafort, “being grilled about Russian ‘collusion,'” suddenly Democrats on the committee “meekly and noiselessly retreated,” and let both men speak to the committee in private.

Why?

Russian President Vladimir Putin

“Turns out Democrats are willing to give up just about anything—including their Manafort moment—to protect Mr. Simpson from having to answer that question,” Strassel surmised.

However, a witness who did testify publicly made the potentially game-changing disclosure that Fusion GPS is also on the payroll of the Russians.

Investor William Browder testified that Fusion GPS should have registered as a foreign agent because it was acting on the behalf of the Russians.

Seemingly taken aback by that bombshell disclosure, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., asked Browder, “The group that did the dossier on President Trump hired this British spy, wound up getting it to the FBI, you believe they were working for the Russians?”

Affirming that, Browder replied, “And in the Spring and Summer of 2016 they were receiving money indirectly from a senior Russian government official.”

That law was designed to punish Russian officials thought to be responsible for the death of tax-fraud whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky by prohibiting their entrance to the United States and denying their use of the American banking system.

Veselnitskaya met in June 2016 with Donald Trump Jr., which Democrats initially claimed proved collusion by his father’s campaign with Russia.

But Trump Jr. said when he quickly found Veselnitskaya had no opposition research on Clinton and only wanted to talk about the Magnitsky Act, he deemed it a complete “waste of time” and devised an excuse to abruptly leave the meeting.

Browder said he believed that meeting was just part of a massive Russian effort to lobby against the Magnitsky Act.

Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS

But the key revelation at the hearing was the depth of the ties of Fusion GPS to the Russians.

And as those ties begin to come more into public view, Strassel wondered:

“What if, all this time, Washington and the media have had the Russia collusion story backward? What if it wasn’t the Trump campaign playing footsie with the Vladimir Putin regime, but Democrats? The more we learn about Fusion, the more this seems a possibility.”

She noted it was also revealed that present at the meeting between Veselnitskaya and Trump Jr. was former Soviet counterintelligence officer Rinat Akhmetshin, who has “acknowledged in court documents that he makes his career out of opposition research, the same work Fusion does. And that he’s often hired by Kremlin-connected Russians to smear opponents.”

That led Strassel to an increasingly plausible conjecture that would turn the entire Russia collusion story on its head, and explain why Democrats and the media are suddenly treating it as radioactive.

“Here’s a thought,” she mused:

“What if it was the Democratic National Committee or Hillary Clinton’s campaign? What if that money flowed from a political entity on the left, to a private law firm, to Fusion, to a British spook, and then to Russian sources? Moreover, what if those Kremlin-tied sources already knew about this dirt-digging, tipped off by Mr. Akhmetshin? What if they specifically made up claims to dupe Mr. Steele, to trick him into writing this dossier?”

Strassel speculated that if Russia were really looking to meddle in the 2016 election and sow chaos, “few things could have been more effective than that dossier,” which drove the FBI investigation, congressional investigations and deeply wounded the president, all of which worked to the benefit of Russian President Putin.

Not one of the charges in the dossier against Trump or his aides has ever been publicly verified.

The charge that Trump attorney Michael Cohen met in August in Prague with Russian agents to cover up payments to Russian hackers was disproved when he produced his passport and travel documents.

Four other targets of Steele’s allegations have denied them, including a Russian diplomat formerly stationed in Washington.

Obama’s former National Intelligence Director, James Clapper, said his agency could not confirm Steel’s charges or identify his sources.

According to the Washington Times, Obama’s former acting CIA director, Mike Morrell, said, “Steele paid intermediaries to talk to former Russian intelligence officers who are noted for peddling ‘innuendo and rumor.'”

Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward called the dossier “garbage.”

Yet, when former FBI Director James Comey testified before the Senate Intelligence committee on June 8, it became clear there was no evidence of potential collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign other than the dossier.

“There simply has been no evidence of collusion whatsoever,” a congressional source familiar with the Russia investigation confirmed to WND.

The dossier was published on Jan. 10 by Buzzfeed and included such salacious allegations against then-President-elect Trump that Democrats initially claimed it would make him susceptible to blackmail.

The dossier accused the Trump campaign of conspiring with Russia to hack Democratic Party computers and leak politically embarrassing emails, but it was the bizarre and unseemly allegations that made so many find it entirely suspect.

Trump called an accusation that he engaged in perverse behavior in a Moscow hotel “horribly made up,” and “disgusting.”

A parade of Democrats in a position to know have since said they have seen no evidence of collusion between the Trump team and Russia, including Sens. Dianne Feinstein, Mark Warner and Joe Manchin of the intelligence committee, Obama’s former spy chiefs, CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

So, if there never was any real evidence of collusion, how did the FBI’s Russia investigation ever get started back in July 2016?

As WND reported, Brennan testified before the House Intelligence Committee on May 23 that he saw no signs of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. But he saw some contacts. And he was worried that might lead to collusion. So he recommended the FBI launch an investigation.

“I know what the Russians try to do,” testified Brennan. “They try to suborn individuals and they try to get individuals, including U.S. persons, to act on their behalf, either wittingly or unwittingly.”

He continued: “And I was worried by a number of the contacts that the Russians had with U.S. persons and so, therefore, by the time I left office on Jan. 20, I had unresolved questions in my mind as to whether or not the Russians had been successful in getting U.S. persons, involved in the campaign or not, to work on their behalf, again, either in a witting or unwitting fashion.”

Nonetheless, Brennan then concluded, “And so, therefore, I felt as though the FBI investigation was certainly well-founded and needed to look into those issues.”

Following that testimony, McCarthy suggested in National Review that Trump should flip the script on his inquisitors in three bold moves that would turn Democrats from hunters into the hunted. And, following Thursday’s testimony by Browder, McCarthy’s suggestions may be a more plausible-than-ever:

1) Appoint a special counsel to investigate political spying, including unmasking and leaks to the media.

2) Have Congress hold hearings on whether the Obama Justice Department colluded with the Hillary Clinton campaign to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.

3) Have Congress hold hearings on collusion between the Clinton Foundation and Russia.

McCarthy contended those investigations could succeed where the Trump-Russia collusion investigation failed, because, unlike the latter, there is evidence of actual wrongdoing.